Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (20 page)

A surge of excitement gave Corinne a wave of new energy, but Luc burst her bubble with a shake of his head.
He handed the paper back to her.

“I’ll admit it’s different from the others, but I don’t see any reason why it would prompt Seoc to kill him.
Seoc has no reason to fear the mortal police.
First, to cause him any trouble they’d have to find him, which is unlikely, as we know only too well.
Second, he’s Fae—he can change his appearance with a snap of his fingers.
And even if the police found him
and
recognized him, he has the power to defend himself magically.
Discovery couldn’t possibly have posed a big enough threat to prompt Seoc to kill.”

The logic registered with Corinne, but so did the desire for something—anything!—about this investigation to begin making sense.

“Damn it, just this afternoon you said that Seoc couldn’t possibly have killed anyone, but we’ve both seen that he did!
Now you’re saying the only motive we can find couldn’t possibly have given him motive for it.
Will you make up your damned mind?”

She regretted her words the minute she spoke them.
Yelled them, actually.
Her hand went instinctively to her temple to try to ease the throbbing there.
God, her head was killing her.
She felt Luc abruptly stand and pace away from her and she sighed.
Hell, she nearly whimpered.

“I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing back a massive lump of guilt.
“You didn’t deserve that, and I had no reason to jump down your throat.
I’m just—” She swallowed again, but the lump didn’t move.
“This is just so damned frustrating.”

“Believe me, I’ve noticed.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, catching his gaze and hoping he could read the sincerity in her eyes.
Temper had a way of turning her into a brat.
She knew it, and she hated it about herself.
The last thing she wanted him to think of when he looked at her was a three-year-old in the middle of a tantrum.
“I try to pretend I’m not a bitch, but sometimes it just leaks out.”

That actually dragged a laugh out of him.
“Sweetheart, if that was your idea of being a bitch, I really need to introduce you to the Queen.
She’s got a thing or twenty to teach you.”

“I’ll be sure to bring my notebook.”

His expression softened and he returned to the sofa.
Settling down beside her, he drew her into his arms and cuddled her close.
“Hey, forget about it.
I didn’t notice you being a bitch if you haven’t noticed me being an unhelpful killjoy.
I feel like I’ve got this job to do, and so far I haven’t managed a single, bloody useful thing.”

He surrounded her with warmth and comfort, and she breathed in his scent with pleasure.
He smelled like man and forests and subtle spices.
“Not true.
You made me breakfast.
And you bought me coffee, which totally makes up for the whole tea debacle.”

She felt a large hand stroke over her hair and heard a distinct rumbling sound.

“Speaking of breakfast,” he mused, “I think that was the last time we ate, and it’s after three o’clock.
Are you hungry?”

Until he mentioned it, she hadn’t been, but all of a sudden her stomach woke up and made its displeasure abundantly clear.
“Starving,” she admitted.

“Then what do you say we go out and get something to eat?
We have time to kill until seven.
Or eight.
And sitting around staring at pieces of paper isn’t helping either of our moods.”

“I say, pierogi, please.
There’s a little Ukrainian place a few blocks over.
The food is fantastic.”

The walk to the restaurant did them good, as did simply getting their minds off the endless treadmill of questions for a while.
The meal didn’t hurt, either.
The pierogi were plump and tender and served with plenty of sautéed onions and gobs of fresh, rich sour cream.
Luc ate about a thousand.
Corinne counted.

They held hands when they left the small café and began the short trip back to her building.
Despite the difference in their heights, they seemed to fit together, naturally matching their strides and laughing together at the sight of the dapper little man on the corner, who bought himself a hot dog from a steam cart and proceeded to eat the empty bun while he fed the meat to the pampered dachshund he had cradled under one arm.

As long as she didn’t think too hard about what they ought to be doing, she felt happy, she decided.
Something about being with Luc just made everything seem somehow…better.
She felt at peace, warm.
Not just where his hand enveloped hers and not just where the omnipresent sexual awareness hummed between them, but inside herself, perilously close to her heart.

Later, Corinne couldn’t have said what caught her attention.
She didn’t really remember seeing anything unusual, or hearing anything that alarmed her.
All she knew was that one moment she was stepping off the curb beside Luc, and the next she was flying through the air and landing hard on the unyielding asphalt with about seven tons of angry warrior pinning her down.
She had a vague impression of something small and mean and ominously black, but it didn’t make any sense.

And neither did whatever Luc seemed to be shouting at her at the top of his lungs.

“Answer me, damn it!”
he bellowed.
“Corinne!
Corinne, are you hurt?”

She tried to answer, but she had to struggle to draw breath.
She nodded vigorously instead.
“Wind…knocked out…,” she gasped, reminding herself to relax.
The quicker she did, the faster the tightness in her chest would ease.

Luc scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the sidewalk.
He sank down onto the stoop of the nearest building and cradled her in his lap.

“Easy,” he murmured, stroking a hand gently over her back.
“Easy, sweetheart.
Slowly now.
Don’t struggle.
Just let it come back.
Easy.”

“Geez Louise!
Is she okay, man?”
Corinne finally got a good lungful of air and opened her eyes just in time to see a scruffy-looking guy in this late twenties jog toward them with wide eyes and an expression of awe.
“Did he hit her?
At first I thought it looked like a bear had gotten loose in the city, but I bet it was one of those idiot costumed messenger kids.
I gotta say, though, I’ve sure as hell never seen one move that fast.
I tried to yell, but he was on top of you before I could even open my mouth.
Is your wife going to be okay?
You need me to call an ambulance?”

Luc was already moving his hands over her, looking for additional injuries.
He looked as grim as death, and twice as menacing.

Corinne offered the stranger a weak smile and shook her head.
“I’m fine.
I just got the wind knocked out of me.
I appreciate the concern, though.
We’ll just sit here for a minute and catch our breath.
You have a good afternoon.”

The man looked like he wanted to stay and ask more questions, but Luc raised his head at just that moment, and suddenly the stranger was mumbling something about being late for work and rushing off as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.
When Corinne caught sight of Luc’s expression, she understood why.

“Okay, I didn’t get a good look—because, hey, I was practically knocked unconscious,” she said, “but I do know that was no kid on a motorbike that sent me flying.
For God’s sake, it felt like getting hit by a Mack truck.
What the hell was that?”

Luc just shook his head.
“Not here.
We need to get you inside.”

Corinne groaned.
“Gee, why do I feel like I’ve heard that before?”

This time, Luc didn’t bother issuing orders or asking directions.
He simply picked her up and carried her the remaining three blocks to her building, past a gaggle of teenage girls just out of school, the florist adding water to his rose bouquets, and two of her neighbors on their way upstairs with groceries.
When he set her down on the sofa, she still thought he looked about as friendly as Genghis Khan.
Which might be why she read a mixed message in the way he began stripping off her clothes.

“Hey,” she yelped, smacking at his hands and offering absolutely no impediment to his peeling her shirt over her head and tossing it aside.
“Is this like a fetish with you?
Every time you get an adrenaline spike, you need to get your dick wet?”

“Just shut up,” he growled, unsnapping her pants and pulling them down past her knees.
He didn’t remove her underwear, though, just pushed the strap of the thong to the side and peered intently at the bare skin of her hip.
“I need to see if it marked you.”

“Marked me?”
Startled and more than a little uneasy, Corinne peered down at her own smooth skin, searching for some invisible brand.
“Marked me how?
And does this mean you know what that thing was?
All I saw was hair and movement and—Christ, I think it had red eyes.”

Luc ignored her until he’d flipped her onto her stomach to examine her side and lower back.
Finally satisfied, he grabbed a soft throw blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around her before dragging her back into his lap and holding her securely.

“Luc?”
she prompted.

He rested his chin on the top of her head.
“It was a
barghest.
”

She blinked.
“Run that one by me again?”

“A
barghest.
”

It sounded like
bar guest
to Corinne, but somehow she didn’t think what had run into her was anything quite so innocent.

“Okay, what does that mean?”

He shifted her closer against his chest.
“It’s a creature from Faerie.
Not a very pleasant one, as you’ve seen.”

“Are you telling me that thing was Fae?
Because I have to say, if it was, you’ve got some relatives experimenting with some pretty hinky genetics, buddy.”

“Very funny.
I’ve been trying to keep things simple for you when it comes to Faerie, but you have to remember that it’s an entire world unto itself.
More than one kind of being lives there, and the word
Fae
is a catchall.
It just refers to anything that originates in Faerie.
It’s easy to use it referring to the sidhe, but really it encompasses a lot more.”

“The sidhe.
You mentioned that word before.”
She searched her memory.
“You said you and Seoc and the Queen were all part of that group.”

“Yes.
It’s a race; or a species, I suppose you could call it.
The sidhe are the denizens of Faerie you would look at and equate most closely with humans.
We look similar, have similar biologies, even some similarities in culture and civilization.”

She positioned her head on his shoulder so she could tilt it back and watch his face as he spoke.
“But the sidhe are only one group.”

“Correct.
There are others, some of whom look similar to humans to varying degrees.
Brownies, for instance, could pass for humans in some circumstances.
And gnomes are occasionally taken for humans with dwarfism.
Even some greater imps can pass, though usually not in daylight.
But other creatures could never be mistaken that way.”

“For instance?”

“Nightmares and kelpies are an example.
They look a bit like horses.
And sprites, pixies, and imps.
Those are what most closely resemble the Tinker Bell–style ‘fairies’ that humans are always going on about.”

Corinne had begun to get the idea.
“And the
barghest.
Did I imagine that looking like some kind of hairy, four-legged pit bull from hell?”

His expression turned grim.
“No, you didn’t imagine that.
They often appear as enormous black dogs.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.
But if it’s another creature from Faerie, how did it get here in Manhattan?
Are those doors still not being guarded?”

“I’m not sure.”
Luc’s hands stroked her arms absently.
The lightest touch made her shiver and lean closer.
“I am, however, becoming very curious.”